What Lurks Beneath

by Ryan Lockwood

  He hurried back toward the opaque pool where the aquarium had been. A number of tourists stood in groups around it, staring down in awe as security guards tried to herd them away. Something moved in the water.

  He looked down into the clouds of suspended sediment in the tank, where the clear waters of the aquarium had been not ten minutes ago, squinting to see past the rippled surface. After a moment, he saw something move again, out of the corner of his eye.

  There was a wave, on the far side of the pool, created from the upward movement of something below. Something big. Just below the surface, the dark shape was rising. He looked at a couple still near the water. He had to warn them.

  Shouting, he ran down the broad, cobbled path toward them. He cut off into some landscaped perennials, racing along the edge of the pool. A groundskeeper listening to music through ear buds as he hacked at some brush with a machete jumped back as Eric hurtled past. Eric brought his forearms in front of his face as he crashed through the screen of vegetation at eye level.

  The woman screamed.

  Near the center of the pool, the elongated tip of a huge tentacle rose vertically out of the calm surface, ten feet or more, snaking skyward with the last foot or two dangling back down. Long rows of pale suckers, visible even from here, ran up one side all the way to the end.

  Several other appendages followed, dripping water as they fanned out like reddish serpents. They extended rapidly in all directions. The two tourists turned to run.

  Two of the arms danced across the water in seconds. One seized the man, coiling around his torso. The octopus silenced his cries of terror with a squeeze, the meaty coils thickening as they applied pressure. There was the sound of bones breaking before the tentacle flung his lifeless body through the air.

  Before the body even landed in the water with a loud splash, the other arm caught the woman and crushed her. It tossed her body sideways, headfirst into the rocks. More arms rose, and moved toward a family trying to gather young children to flee.

  The groundskeeper behind Eric muttered something, and he turned to see the man drop the machete and run.

  CHAPTER 63

  Mack hobbled down the ornately cobbled walkway, toward the sound of Eric’s voice. The nub where his leg had once been throbbed painfully from running across the grounds on his prosthesis, and he gnawed on the ruined toothpick in his mouth to get his mind off it. He’d just arrived from the casino to find a group of resort staff gathered where the aquarium had collapsed. Then he’d heard Eric’s desperate shouting and hustled toward it.

  Mack could see him a stone’s throw away, standing above the ruined aquarium tank, yelling. He was alone, his back to Mack as he shouted out over the water. He kept leaning down and thrashing the water with his arms, then standing to yell again.

  Mack stopped, breathing hard, and listened.

  “Come on, you son of a bitch! Over here!” Eric was shouting at a family on the other side of the pool.

  Mack spit the toothpick out of his mouth. “Eric!”

  Eric ignored him, still hollering and slapping at the water with something he held in his right fist. Mack saw a shortcut and dashed through some brush. He emerged and stumbled to the water’s edge, fifteen feet behind the kid. Eric’s clothes were drenched, and he was holding a machete.

  Then Mack saw them.

  Huge shapes, darting up through the water, directly at the family. Tentacles. And he could see another one, moving more slowly, in the opposite direction. One that Eric couldn’t see from down at the water’s edge.

  “Don’t move, Eric.”

  Eric turned when he heard Mack’s voice. Twenty feet behind him, the tentacle rose quietly from the water, lengthening into a long, inverted hook of rigid flesh.

  “What?” Eric said. He slowly turned his head back toward the water.

  The tentacle continued to rise behind him. It was tapered, each visible foot of length thicker than the last, and reddish-brown in color, with two rows of round suckers.

  It fell forward. Slapping the water, it rushed at Eric. He started toward Mack.

  The arm tip swept sideways and just missed Eric’s head as he flinched downward. He splashed through shin-deep water on a ledge in the pool and was almost on the shore when he stumbled and went down. Mack ran toward him, into the water, and saw why he had fallen. The slender tip of a second tentacle was corkscrewed around his ankle.

  Eric reached for Mack. “Mack! Help me!”

  Eric fell onto his belly, hard, as he was jerked backwards. He began to slide away in the knee-deep water, twisting as he was rolled onto his back. He tried to hack at the tentacle with the machete. As Mack scrambled after him, he continued to rotate clockwise, sputtering each time his face went under. He dropped the machete and reached both arms toward shore, clawing for a grip on the bottom.

  As they twisted Eric’s body, the coils around his legs had thickened, advancing up his frame in spirals as the thing easily turned him over again in the shallows. Like some deadly python, the arm was going to coil up his body and crush him to death.

  Mack plunged his hand in the water and snatched the machete just as the other tentacle came back toward them, whistling past his head. He swung the machete after it, but he was late and missed. Eric was wrapped up to his hips now, grimacing in pain. He looked at Mack in agony.

  Mack splashed toward him as the tentacle hauled him away, back to the deeper water. He was almost to the drop off. Mack raised the machete. The first tentacle came back at him again and he turned, swinging the curved blade as he ducked.

  This time it struck home. The machete lodged into the tentacle a full twenty feet from the tip, where it was thicker than Mack’s own body. He pulled on the handle, but the blade was imbedded six inches into the dense flesh.

  The arm recoiled, twisting away and taking the machete with it. It wriggled in the air madly and the weapon finally came free as blue blood spurted into the air, spraying both men and the water around them. The wounded tentacle flopped down, splashing furiously, and then retreated into the pool.

  Mack found the machete again and turned back to Eric. The coiling tentacle had lifted him up out of the water, and now slowly swung his body around, turning his head away from Mack. It seemed to be toying with him. Eric dug at the crushing flesh around his waist with both hands, his eyes shut in pain, and then his feet were thrust skyward and his head went under.

  Mack lunged toward him, focused on the foot-thick arm. The suckers slid past as the tentacle twisted higher up Eric’s body. It was almost around his chest. Mack raised the machete over his head and took aim at the thickest part of the arm, just below the surface and six inches from Eric’s torso, and brought the blade down.

  He felt the machete strike home, passing clean through. There was a tremendous splash as Eric and the severed arm fell back down into the water.

  The water clouded with blue blood, and Eric’s head popped above the surface. He was turning purple and still struggling to breathe. A meaty stump spouting blue fluid popped out of the water next to him momentarily before twisting back under, rolling on the ledge and taking Eric under with it.

  Mack tossed the machete aside and grabbed at the severed tentacle with both hands, trying to uncoil it and lift Eric’s head to where he could breathe, but it was impossible. The meaty arm, despite being amputated, was still squeezing, and with Eric’s weight it was like lifting two or more men.

  Mack instead dug his fingers under Eric’s armpits and lifted slightly, getting his head above water, then heaved backwards. He grunted as he slid Eric’s body and the tentacle ensnaring it toward shore. They were almost there when Mack tripped on his prosthetic leg and splashed onto his rear.

  He kept Eric’s head above water, but the kid was losing consciousness and unable to speak. The detached arm coiled up as far as his ribcage, slowly crushing the life out of him.

  CHAPTER 64

  Total darkness.

  Ashley held the boy against her breast, keeping his head a
bove the water, both of them trembling. He was no more than six or seven years old. She pulled his face back against her wet blouse.

  She could hear the others’ heavy breathing in the small room. She had gotten a momentary look at the area behind the door before the water had shorted out the electrical system, causing the overhead lights to go out. She remembered seeing only a pile of construction tools to one side, a workbench with schematics on it, a rough tunnel running away into the rock. In the light, she’d seen the shocked expressions of the boy, of Barbas, and Roxanne. And the man wearing a cowboy hat was standing in the water, his back to them, bracing something against the door.

  She now stood on something submerged in the water, maybe the workbench or another table of sorts. Her damp head was only inches from the hard ceiling, but still the water came to her shoulders. At least they could still breathe. And the water seemed to have stopped rising—for now.

  In the tunnel outside, the rushing water had settled, calmed. She hadn’t heard anything against the metal door, now totally submerged below them, for some time. She breathed slowly, and recited the Lord’s Prayer in her head. She had managed to calm the child’s cries enough that he now only sobbed quietly against her neck.

  “Is everyone all right?” It was Sturman’s deep voice, coming from the far corner of the room. She knew he was alone there, standing on some lower object, but with his height he was able to keep his head above the water.

  “There’s something wrong with my knee,” Roxanne said, her voice quavering. She’d been in an utter panic until Barbas had shaken her and told her to control herself. From the sounds of their breathing, he now held her the way Ashley held the boy.

  Sturman said, “Anyone else? Anything serious?”

  Silence.

  “Good. Does anyone have any sort of light?”

  “I have a cell phone, but it’s filled up with water,” Ashley said.

  “There may be a work lamp, somewhere farther up the tunnel,” Barbas said.

  “Battery-powered?” Sturman said.

  “They use mostly plug-ins down here, but I’m sure we purchased some cordless lights as well.”

  Sturman said, “Is there any emergency phone down here? A radio? Any way to communicate with the resort?”

  “No,” Barbas said.

  “All right then. Everyone stay put. I’ll be back,” Sturman said. Ashley heard him swim past her, farther into the tunnel.

  Just before the tank gave, the guard—a young man Ashley barely knew named Arthur—had tried to run away, through the jets of water. The boy’s grandmother had looked at them pleadingly from the ground as Sturman had roughly shoved the rest of them through the door into darkness.

  Then the boom. The moving wall of water. Him slamming the metal door shut.

  She remembered the screams. They punctuated the sounds of the water at first, rising in high-pitched terror above them. The old woman, and more people farther down the tunnel, wailing as they were washed away, just before they drowned. Or worse.

  And Georgina . . . She felt tears rise and pushed away the thought. Not now.

  She had thought the door’s hinges would fail when she heard the wall of water burst through the glass and crash against it. The raging torrent had continued rumbling against the door in a deafening rush, pouring in underneath it, hissing through in pressurized jets along its sides and top, quickly filling the fluorescent-lit room with powerful, stinging streams as they groped for a way out. The lights went out then, but the hissing had continued as they stumbled in the darkness, seeking perches, finally fading only when the water had completely submerged the door. But the heavy metal door had held, probably in part because Sturman had anticipated the sudden pressure change and quickly braced a long board against it.

  “Where does that construction tunnel go?” Ashley said, peering into the darkness where she could hear Sturman splashing through the water.

  “Nowhere,” Barbas said. “It ends in another seventy or eighty feet. There’s no outlet.”

  “Is there any other way out of this room?”

  “No.” Barbas said irritably. “Just the way we came in.”

  After several minutes, Sturman shouted that he’d found something. Then, from a short distance away, a white light bounced along the tunnel walls as he swam back with it. When he rounded the bend, she saw that he was holding the light above him. It was protected by a metal frame and had a hook above it, like those used to hang under car hoods, but it was apparently battery-powered. Ashley could now see the heads and shoulders of the others poking out above the water.

  In the harsh glow of the lamp, they quickly re-examined their underwater prison. A pocket of air remained in the last foot or so of space near the nine-foot ceiling, but silt-laden saltwater had flooded everything else, to a level just above the top of the door.

  “That tunnel appears to slope upward,” Sturman said.

  “Yes,” Barbas said. “It does. It will eventually head to the surface.”

  “We need to head that way. The water in here may keep rising.”

  The boy suddenly stiffened. “What’s that?” he said.

  “What’s what?” Ashley said.

  “That noise.”

  Everyone else remained silent. She held her breath, listening. Hoping she would hear nothing at all. But then she heard it too. Something sliding across the outside of the door, making a slight squeaking sound. Like a squeegee on a dirty window.

  Roxanne said, “They’re here. They’re here for us!” She moved toward the door.

  “Stop,” Sturman said.

  “But we need to let them in. Help is here!”

  “No,” he whispered. “Get back.”

  She moaned, but her voice was muffled an instant later as Barbas pressed his hand over her mouth. There was a rattle, and the doorknob jiggled.

  “What’s it doing?” Ashley whispered, looking at Sturman.

  “It’s trying to get in.”

  CHAPTER 65

  The severed octopus arm was less animated now, but still writhed on the ground in front of Val. She kept her distance as she stared at it in wonder. It was enormous, the shape of an elephant trunk but longer, brownish-gray in color, the reds now fading to narrow streaks. It still moved on the wet concrete, like one of the headless vipers her father had killed when she was a child. It twisted, rolled over again, as if fighting to return to the water.

  As if it had a mind of its own.

  Biologically, an octopus arm wasn’t much different than a snake’s body. It contained a developed-enough nervous system to keep functioning to some degree, even after being separated from the animal’s brain. In a way, it had a life of its own.

  But on its severed end, the blue blood had nearly stopped seeping out. It would be unable to function soon. She wondered how much longer the arm had been before her uncle had lopped it off. How big this animal was.

  A young policewoman stood nearby, to keep the tourists snapping images of the arm on their iPhones from going any closer. She had allowed Val to approach after she explained who she was.

  Mack finished reattaching his limb on a nearby bench and stood. He walked up to the arm and kicked it, hard, with his prosthetic. “Hurts, doesn’t it?” he yelled. He turned toward the water in the tank. “You only got seven-and-a-half now, you fuckin’ squirter!”

  Val said, “Mack, please. Move away from it. It could still hurt you.”

  “Fine.” He moved over beside her, and nodded down at Eric. Resting on the ground near them, he was awake now, with a paramedic talking to him, but still grimacing in pain.

  Mack told Val everything that had happened. He seemed overly happy when he talked about hurting the octopus. “So I guess now the kid here’s a damn hero,” he said. “Unlike me.”

  Eric glanced up at him for a moment, and then looked away. He was pale, and clearly in pain, but she knew that wasn’t what hurt him the most.

  When Val had first arrived, Eric had been semiconscious, attended
by the paramedic inspecting the bruises forming on his hips and legs. Mack had been watching the lagoon anxiously. Will, Ashley, and several others were still missing. Apparently, they were all last seen headed into the underground aquarium tunnels, before they flooded.

  “We need Eric’s ROV,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  “To see if they’re still down there. They could still be alive. Eric?”

  He looked up at her. “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to run back and get some equipment. And DORA. You think you can run her?”

  He nodded.

  Mack said, “You got a plan?”

  “Come on. We’ll make one as we go.”

  They started to turn away when Eric spoke.

  “Mack, I need to talk to you.”

  “Save it, kid. And you’re welcome.”

  As they hurried toward the lobby, Val’s thoughts returned again to her dad. He’d been a tall, rough man. A heavy drinker, with a temper. So flawed. But she’d always known that he loved her, and she’d loved him back for who he was. The way she loved Will.

  Maybe there was still a chance for him. For them. If he was alive.

  Pain.

  Anger. Confusion.

  The octopus clung to the bottom of the tank, beneath the listing, four-story section of submerged safety glass. She had eliminated every possible threat she had encountered. Except one. Something small and unseen, outside of the water, had cut off a third of one of her arms. Her instincts had forced her to retreat.

  She had lost arms before, when she was younger, and they had always grown back. But now, at this phase in her life, her body would no longer devote resources to regeneration. And the wound was painful, diminishing her capabilities to defend. She needed to return to her den, and to remain there to protect her defenseless young. But she could not. There was nowhere to go.